Go slow to go fast.

Week starting Jan 23, 2011

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2009201020112012
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Location:

Westminster,CO,USA

Member Since:

Nov 11, 2009

Gender:

Male

Goal Type:

Other

Running Accomplishments:

Finally started learning how to run in '09 after totally botching it up for the 14 years prior and dealing with chronic IT injury...have had zero IT band pain since fall of '09 and have run way more than ever before in my life...loving it.

PR's

Road Mile: 4:44 - Pearl St Mile August 2011 

2K: 6:32 - Uni HIll 2K 2011

3K: 10:07 - West end 3K 2011

5K - 16:53 - Turkey Leg 5K 2011

10K - 38:38 - Butte to Butte Eugene OR 2003 

Half - Never raced a half

Road Marathon - 2:57:19 - 11/12/2011 - solo.

Trail Marathon - 4:48 - Kings peak August 2011

55K - 4:59:54 - Moab red hot 55K 2011

Short-Term Running Goals:

Be healthy, run injury-free, listen to my body.

Sub 16 min 5K

Sub 34 min 10K

Sub 2:40 Marathon

    2012 Tentative Schedule

  1.  Quicker Quaker 5K January
  2. Boston Marathon - April
  3. ??

Long-Term Running Goals:

Get stronger, faster and more fit as a runner and biker to allow for bigger adventures as the years go on.

Still be running in my 80's.  

Personal:

I'm married to Nan Kennard and she kicks my butt at running.  She has beat me handily in every race we have done together except for a downhill mile we did once.  She is my running inspiration.  I'd like to run a marathon with her someday and actually keep up.  

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Miles:This week: 0.00 Month: 0.00 Year: 0.00
Bare Feet Lifetime Miles: 282.68
Cycling 2011 Lifetime Miles: 291.40
Altra Instinct July '10 Lifetime Miles: 637.35
Altra Instinct Sep '11 Lifetime Miles: 481.45
Altra Lone Peak Lifetime Miles: 157.50
Altra Instinct Black Lifetime Miles: 69.00
Altra Adam Lifetime Miles: 27.50
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
41.000.003.000.5044.50
NB MT101 - Green 11 Miles: 8.95NB MT101 - Black 11.5 Miles: 30.55
Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00Weight: 0.00
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
8.950.000.000.008.95

~9 miles - 1:40 - 11:10/mile - 2150' vertical

Matt is in town visiting his Dad (also our stake president) and he came by my place to join me for a run this morning.  Thanks for the company Matt, that was a nice run. 

We ran from my house, up skunk canyon, down mesa trail toward chataqua and then up the royal arch trail.  I hadn't been up royal arch before, its a cool trail.  It was steep.  about 800' vertical over .8 miles until we hit sentinel pass.  We didn't finish the 1/4 mile to royal arch because I needed to head home.  

Nice easy cruise on the trails, very enjoyable.  And it was nice to check out a new trail. 

NB MT101 - Green 11 Miles: 8.95
Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00Weight: 0.00
Comments(3)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
11.000.003.000.0014.00

My wife is fast.  I challenge any of you reading this to out run her in an interval workout.  (OK Jason, you might be able to hang with her...for half the repeats...if you're feeling really fresh) She was probably going 70-80% today due to her race this weekend and I was still not really close to hanging.

Since Jason and George were both out for the green mtn. ascent at 6:30 I decided to join Nan, Colleen, Simon and Katie doing some 4 min. intervals.

Here were my pace splits for the 5 x 4min: 5:42, 5:28, 5:47, 5:31, 5:40 - The 1st and 3rd were up, the rest were down.  Nan's splits were way faster, I'm sure she never went over 5:30 pace on any of them.

I wasn't feeling all that sharp this morning.  But it still felt good to get the legs moving faster than normal.  But I couldn't seem to push my HR higher than 169.  Doing 800's last Thursday I was getting it up to 179.  Perhaps my legs were just flat from 2K of climbing yesterday, or the cold...not sure.

8.4 Miles - 1 hour - 7:09 avg - HR 151 avg - 160' vertical

But, being a creature of habit and also wanting to get some decent vertical in for the week before going to Houston to watch Nan race this weekend, I went directly from the FAC after the workout up baseline to the Gregory Canyon Trailhead and ran a loop up Green mtn. as an additional 'cool down'.   It was a gorgeous, calm, silent morning up there, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Since I was all warmed up from the workout, it was the most comfortable I have felt in a long time cruising up to Green at a casual pace.

I exchanged greetings with Tony on upper greenman, then slipped on the spikes for the remainder and topped out in a really casually paced 48 minutes going the long 3.25 mile way up gregory to greenman.  I came down the front side, and shouldn't have taken off my spikes at the saddle junction because the front side warranted spikes pretty much the whole way below that...it was a bit slower going.  Rounded off the mileage a bit up gregory again to end at 14 for the day.

Green mtn. loop: 5.6 miles - 1:20 - 2475' vertical - HR: 142 avg - TH to summit 48 min.

Total for the morning: 14 miles - 2635' vertical - 2:20 - 10:00 avg

NB MT101 - Black 11.5 Miles: 14.00
Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00Weight: 0.00
Comments(1)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
7.550.000.000.007.55

OK, all you 'ultra runners' out there, picture this hypothetical scenario.  I'm kind of curious how this would make you feel:

 You're cruising along the mesa trail in Boulder on your easy recovery day.  Your heart rate is very relaxed in the mid 130's, just trotting down a downhill section enjoying the mountain air, running through pine tree single track.  Then you turn a corner and notice a runner on a switch back below you out of the corner of your eye, and you just keep cruising down.  Then you do a double take since your brain has now processed the long hair, the beard, the smooth stride, and you realize you're catching up to Tony Krupicka...and yet you're barely breathing from lack of effort.  What the?!?  Then by the time you get down the switch back he's out of site like a deer that pranced off into the woods, and you're back to reality, realizing he must surely have just barely jumped on the trail in front of you and was then bounding off up the nearest mountain at some ludicrous speed.  But your curiosity is still peaked, so you pick up the pace a little, and around the next bend, just behind NCAR by the mallory trail he's still just ahead of you, much closer now.  Weird!  So you catch up to him and then slow the pace down to run and chat for ten minutes or so as you cruise up the mesa trail past bear canyon and up the steeper Fern canyon trail for a little while.

OK, so how does that make you feel/think?   

Alright, you may have guessed that there was a little too much detail there for me to be making that up by now, so I'll tell you what I felt...Heck Yeah!! I'm in awesome shape right now!  I was hardly breathing and I was catching up to Tony on my easy day!  Wahoooo!  I'm going to win Western States this year! (OK, that very last line was fabricated just now, I didn't actually feel/think that at any point)

Amazing what a little 'positive mental attitude' can cover up isn't it?  And hey, maybe if you lie to yourself long enough eventually it may turn to the truth?

The good news is, our subconscious mind can't seem to differentiate all the time.  While in reality, my logical mind is well aware that I most likely just happened to hop on the mesa trail from the skunk canyon trail a couple hundred yards after Tony had just run by and we were most likely running a similar easy pace.  Then once I saw him, I definitely picked up the pace a lot in order to catch up and run with him for a bit.  Then I slowed back down to the pace I was at before so I could run and chat with him.

But even though I know all that, my conscious knowledge of that still isn't taking away the really cool feeling that occured when I noticed myself catching up to Tony even though I was running really easy.  That event told my sub-conscious in no uncertain terms that I must be in good shape, and that I can run with fast guys.  And it embedded that in my belief set for now.  And it increased my confidence to some degree, despite all the logical explanations my mind can come up with for why that may or may not be the case.  Interesting stuff.....

Thanks Tony...for going slow sometimes so I can feel fast! 

It was nice chatting with Tony for a while about his upcoming race at Rocky Raccoon and other stuff.  Also, I appreciated him asking about my upcoming race and giving me some beta on the Moab Red Hot course.  He took 2nd place there to Kyle Skaggs by only 1 second in 4:03:03 in 2008. 

For the morning: 7.55 Miles - 1:06:35 - 8:51avg - HR: 138avg - 1300' vertical - I am pleased that 5:30-6:00 pace is feeling like easy recovery pace coming down from the mesa trail and my HR is not getting even into the 140's for that section/pace

NB MT101 - Black 11.5 Miles: 7.55
Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00Weight: 0.00
Comments(9)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
8.500.000.000.509.00

Met up with George and Justin Mock this am at the Fairview track at 6:30.

George warmed up, but is nursing a calf strain and was not in a position to do a workout.  Turns out Justin wasn't feeling too motivated since he ran a hard 13 yesterday in like 6:13 pace avg.  And I wasn't jumping out of my skin to start running 5:30 pace this morning either, so we just jogged.  Then George stopped and Justin and I kept jogging, and then after 4 miles or so we decided to throw in a few 'strides' of 200 meters.  And I can't resist opening it up on a 200 meter, so, much to Justin's surprise I passed him on the first one and did it in 30 sec.  Then we did 200 m jog, then 3 more 200's on/off.  Did them in 30, 31, 32, 31.  That 3rd one I was already starting feel it.

Ouch.  That was a shock to the system.  Going from 7 ish pace to 4 min. pace right away like that shocked my heart/lungs.  It took me a good mile of jogging after those before the nausea went completely away and I felt normal again.  I like doing those after I have eased into them by doing a bunch of 5:30 pace stuff.  That was too quick too early for my liking.

So, kind of a wimpy workout today, but whatever.  It was nice running with George and Justin.  I'm glad I got at least about 6K of vertical in this week already, and another solid speed workout on Tuesday so I can chill this weekend in flat Houston. 

NB MT101 - Black 11.5 Miles: 9.00
Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00Weight: 0.00
Comments(3)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
5.000.000.000.005.00

5 miles easy in houston with Nan.  Just a shake out run for her for the half marathon on Saturday.

We did 4 strides, then 4 x 45 sec at 5:15 pace which felt really easy at sea level and for such short intervals.

Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00Weight: 0.00
Add Comment
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
0.000.000.000.000.00

Oops, didn't get time to squeeze a run in today.  Too busy watching Nan run, and traveling back home.  That's alright though.  I am itching to run though with such a relatively light week of mileage this week and last week only being in the mid 40's. I was half-tempted to go out tonight at 9 when we got home, but I'm kind of tired because I couldn't sleep past 3:00 am this morning since I was so excited to watch Nan race from the pace truck.  Oh well, it will probably be good for me to take 2 rest days, and then I'll be really fresh for hitting one more solid 60 ish mile week next week before tapering down over the next two weeks for Moab. 

Check out Nan's race report here

and more photos here 

Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00Weight: 0.00
Comments(3)
Easy MilesMarathon Pace MilesThreshold MilesVO2 Max MilesTotal Distance
41.000.003.000.5044.50
NB MT101 - Green 11 Miles: 8.95NB MT101 - Black 11.5 Miles: 30.55
Night Sleep Time: 0.00Nap Time: 0.00Total Sleep Time: 0.00Weight: 0.00
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